With increasing demand for more information to be supplied to homes and/or businesses, many network communication providers are adding, expanding, upgrading, and/or switching their networks to optical communications network(s). Optical communications networks typically offer high-speed voice, video, and data transmission between providers and homes as well as businesses and network to network. Conventional exemplary optical networks include fiber to the node/neighborhood (“FTTN”), fiber to the curb (“FTTC”), fiber to the building (“FTTB”), fiber to the home (“FTTH”), fiber to the premises (“FTTP”), or other edge location to which a fiber network extends. Other exemplary optical networks may, for example, carry data traffic within a city or from city to city. At least a portion of the data traffic may then be sent to its destination via, for example, one of the above mentioned local optical networks (FTTN, FTTC, FTTB, FTTH, FTTP). Various networks may use, for example, wave-division multiplexing (WDM) for carrying its data traffic.
To route optical signals between various optical nodes or devices, a wavelength-division multiplexing (“WDM”) system is employed in a fiber-optic communication network to handle optical routing. The WDM system, for example, is able to multiplex a number of optical signals with different wavelengths onto a single optical fiber. A wavelength may also be referred as a frequency or a color. Different wavelengths, for instance, can be generated by using different lasers capable of generating unique wavelength of optical light. With a WDM network environment, a typical fiber can be configured to carry multiple sets of network traffic using different traffic wavelengths.
A conventional network includes multiple nodes wherein each node typically couples to other nodes via one or more optical fibers. Since each fiber or optical fiber can carry multiple sets of frequencies or degrees of data traffic, inter-office fiber optic cabling at the node can be messy and/or complicated. For example, a typical optical node can be configured to handle up to 20 degrees and each degree of node connection requires multiple fibers or fiber jumpers to route or process optical signals. As such, hundreds if not thousands of optical fiber jumpers are deployed to route the signals to various optical modules.
A problem associated with correctly connecting between intra-nodal (or inter-nodal) optical modules is that the connections using voluminous fiber jumpers tend to be error prone and/or complicated. For example, correctly connecting and/or diagnosing fiber connection takes time and resources. Another drawback is that the installing and maintaining large number of fibers and/or jumpers can be operationally challenging.